> On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Matthew Hiller wrote:
>
> > From what I understand, the main disadvantage is that if your root
> > filesystem gets unrecoverably corrupted, and you've dumped everything
> > into it, you lose everything. For a typical single-user Linux
> > installation, are there other disadvantages that I'm not thinking of?
I have heard a few standard justifications for splitting up your
filesystems into different partitions.
1. Speed. The files that are going to be accessed the most often should
be towards the middle of the platter, because on average, the head can
get to those sectors the fastest.
2. Firebreaks. Partitions provide a pretty hard limit against a file
growing to large, filling your disk and crashing your machine. I think a
common example given is that /var should be in a seperate partition so
that massive amounts of mail won't crash your disk. There are other
examples.
3. Upgrades/Damage. This is the one that Shwwn mentioned earlier about
replacing whole filesystems without affecting the others.
I'm sure there are others.
I guess you could argue that for a single-user machine these are not huge
considerations. They may become more important if you are setting up a
mission critical server.
-Miles